Excerpt: The Gathering Dark
So I didn’t have time to write anything for the prompt this week, so here’s something that kinda fits, from an older, unfinished story.
Prompt: “I’m not saying you can’t shoot him. I’m just saying you can’t shoot him here.”
Duke came by at one, as promised, with meals and ridiculously complicated coffees. Nathan had to work to keep a neutral expression; for something that apparently contained a large portion of whipped foam and was sprinkled with ground chicory, it was surprisingly good, and the sheer volume of sugar in it would probably be just as effective as the caffeine in keeping him awake for the next few hours. Duke ate with them, taking up space on the couch and listening to them talk, occasionally interjecting a comment when he knew something about someone they were discussing.
It wasn’t exactly a break, but it was refreshing anyway; Audrey certainly looked the better for it, and they dove back in with renewed energy when Duke headed back out an hour later, with the firm threat that if they didn’t pack up by eight, he was going to come back and drag them out himself.
Nathan was pretty sure he wasn’t actually serious, but he did plan to make sure they went home at some point.
He should have taken Duke at his word; at eight thirty, he walked back in looking irritated.
“Any progress?” he asked, and Audrey looked up, startled- she’d been plotting out houses on a town map, trying to find any kind of commonality between their victims.
“Not yet,” she replied, and Duke stepped closer and plucked the pencil out of her hand, which was a far bolder move than Nathan would have dared to try. Of course, he’d been with Audrey all day, had seen the steadily increasing frustration as she fought to come up with a solution and failed.
“Then you’re not losing out by stopping. Come on, it is time to wrap up, you’ve been here since seven this morning, you need to take a break, eat something, and think about something else for a little while. And then you need to sleep, and I guarantee you, if you shoot me it is not going to get you back to your work any faster, it will just create new distractions, so please stop reaching for your gun.” Duke gave Audrey’s hand a pointed look where it had definitely twitched in the direction of her sidearm, and Nathan actually almost laughed, which probably meant he was in need of more than a few hours sleep himself.
“Come on, Parker, no shooting civilians in the office, know I wouldn’t be able to overlook that. Not even for you,” he said, closing the file he’d been going over. “You want to shoot him, you at least have to follow him outside, and at that point you may as well let him feed you first.”
“Thank you, Nathan, for your very helpful support,” Duke said, glaring over his shoulder in Nathan’s direction, though there was a hint of a smile well-hidden around his mouth.
“Don’t want to have to move everything into the other office while we wait for a crew to come in and clean the carpets,” Nathan replied, shrugging and standing up, reaching for his jacket- Duke was wearing a sweater over the shirt he’d had on earlier, so it’d apparently gotten colder.
“I do not have to take this kind of abuse,” Duke said, and he was obviously having trouble hiding his amusement, now, one corner of his mouth quirking up, the laugh lines around his eyes deepening.
“And yet, here you are anyway,” Nathan said, walking over to pull Audrey’s chair out, offering her a hand. “Come on, Parker. Change of scenery might do us some good, let’s go. He’s not going to stop until we do.”
“We could arrest him,” Audrey grumbled, but she accepted Nathan’s hand and stood up, only a little wobbly after sitting in one position for the better part of the last few hours.
“That means paperwork, and I do not want to do any more paperwork,” Nathan replied, as Duke grabbed Audrey’s jacket from off the back of her chair and draped it over her shoulders. And it maybe felt wrong to be joking, to be having to work to hide a smile, when they had no idea how to keep this from happening again, when there were still twenty seven innocent children in the morgue and a hundred adults who didn’t know who they were, but it also felt necessary, felt like a strained muscle being carefully stretched.
They weren’t any good to anyone if they worked themselves into insensibility, if they drowned themselves in tragedy.
It was probably a good thing they had someone willing to show up and drag them out of the office.
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